


Endeavor: A Dialogic Season 1 Outtake

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Dialogic [2]
Category: Castle
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Past Relationship(s), Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 12:11:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18620383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: The entrance to her apartment building seems darker than it should.





	Endeavor: A Dialogic Season 1 Outtake

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of an alt for Chapter 9 of Dialogic

 

_“What should I do?”  
_ _—Richard Castle, Little Girl Lost (1 x 09)_

* * *

 

The entrance to her apartment building seems darker than it should. It’s unnerving enough that she squints upward, looking for burned out bulbs. There aren’t any, though. The night presses in from the street, but over the door, by the wall of mailboxes, in the lobby itself, things are as they should be. The gloom is just her.

She foregoes the elevator out of habit, but she takes the stairs slowly. It’s nothing like her usual, impatient gait. She tells herself she’s not stalling.She practically has to say it out loud, which might mean that she is stalling, avoiding, running. The possibility launches her into her usual gait. She covers the last flight and a half two at a time. 

The heavy stairwell door is just about too much for her, though. Her breath drags in and out, heavier than it has any reason to be. She stands with her hands poised on the push bar, her forehead resting against the battleship grey metal and allows herself a moment to bend under the weight of everything: The awful particulars of the case, the shock of Will’s return, and the fact that she wouldn’t have known a damned thing about it for who knows how long if it weren’t for the case. She gives herself a moment to flare hot over that,but the grim reality that the odds of Angela Candela’s coming home alive are shrinking with every tick of the clock.

She doesn’t time herself. Not quite, but she is nothing if not self-disciplined, and it might literally be sixty seconds on the nose when she pops the bar with the heel of one hand. She makes it three strides down the hallway before she sees the hunched shape in the shadows outside her front door. Her hand is on her hip. She’s swinging her gun up even as information filters in and she processes the scene. 

 _“Castle?”_ Her voice is too loud for any time of day. It’s _certainly_ too loud for this time of night. She holsters up and closes the gap until she’s looming over him. “What are you . . . ? I told you to go—”

“You didn’t say _whose_ home,” he cuts in as he makes his way to his feet. He grimaces and dances from foot to foot as he tucks a pen and moleskine into the inner pocket of his jacket. “Ahhhhh, pins and needles!”

“Castle,” she sighs. She can’t even work her way up to exasperated. She’s too wrung out from everything. “I’m just here to change clothes—“ She bites down hard on the inside of her cheek. She is so not up for whatever innuendo is about to glide right off his tongue, but she needn’t be, it seems. The innuendo never comes. 

“I figured.” It’s all he says. He’s not even looking at her, let alone leering. He’s looking at his feet. “I didn’t want to call and bother you, but I thought . . . I just wanted to see if you were ok,” he finishes in a rush.

A long moment of silence follows. It stretches out, and she doesn’t know how it will end. 

“Not really,” she says, surprising them both. She fishes in her coat pocket for her keys, weighing the moment. Not stalling, deciding. “You wanna come in for a minute?”

“Yes. Yeah. Yes,” he stutters. “For a minute.”

He’s silent as he follows her through the door. His gaze sweeps up, down, and over everything. He’s drinking it all in, but to his credit, he keeps his hands to himself. He doesn’t roam around, picking up every last thing and putting it back in the wrong place. He wants to. She sees the way he has to shove his hands in his pockets and root his feet to the floor.

“I’m gonna go . . .” She gestures toward the bedroom, though he has no way of knowingwhat’s where, other than what’s in front of him. “I’d say make yourself at home, but I don’t think there’s much of anything.” 

He tips his head toward her. She can almost see the joke forming on his lips—the tease, the taunt, the provocation. She can see him bite it back.

“Can I .. . “ He searches for the word. His hands come out of his pockets.“Scrounge? Just in the kitchen.”

“Yeah. Fine.” She starts down the hallway. He makes his way into the kitchen, his head tipping back to take in the glass curving overhead. She feels exposed. Awkward about leaving him there, but there’s a curious spark of something like gratitude for the company. “But I really don’t think there’s anything.” 

“I’ll check,” he says. He takes in her body language—one arm crossed over her body, one hand on the threshold to the hallway—and rolls his eyes a little. He gives her a sly smile. “Just in here, I promise.”

* * *

She’s sore and sluggish as she pulls her sweater over her head, then steps out of her jeans. Her reflection is alien in the bathroom mirror. She feels like she’s aged a decade in the last ten hours or so. Behind her, the tub seems to call out, but there’s no time for that, of course. There’s no time to think or process or rest. She needs to get back to the Candelas’. 

She makes do with the sink. She splashes water on her face and ruthlessly scrubs her teeth. She strips to the skin and shoves her cast-off clothes deep in the hamper like she can close the lid on everything.

He’s as good as his word. When she emerges back into the kitchen in fresh clothes with her hair clinging to the damp nape of her neck, he’s at the table just pouring hot water from the kettle into two mugs. 

“Well,” he says without looking up. His hands are busy arranging a pair of plates and a scattering of small bowls she doesn’t remember having. ”You weren’t kidding. You’re down to your last scrape of peanut butter, and I don’t even think the mustard in the fridge is good anymore.” 

“Castle”—she curls her fingers around the door frame—“there’s no time for this.” 

That halts his movements. He looks up, arrested in the act of sliding a mug beside the small plate at the head of the table. “There’s news?” 

“No.” She pats the phone in her pocket, but it hasn’t beeped, dinged, or vibrated. “There’s no news. But I—“

“But you,” he repeats, a chiding imitation of her. “You have time for a cup of tea and some very dried blueberries and what I _hope_ is granola.” He pulls out the chair. He fixes her with an expectant look, but he can’t maintain it. The gloom—the weight of everything—reduces his bossy, cheerful façade to nothing. “Beckett . . .”

“I should be doing something.”

It’s such a stupid thing to say, even to the floor. Even in a voice so low, she’s not sure how he hears it. But of course he does.

“You’re doing your best.” She’s startled to find him so close. Startled that his fingers are hovering at her elbow, her shoulder, her hip, and he’s herding her toward the table. He’s sitting her down and nudging the mug toward her hand. “Your best is great,” he says, with fierce conviction. “And it’s all you can do.”

“All I can do,” she echoes. Her fingers curl around the mug. The warmth passes through her skin and along her jangled nerves. The scent of bergamot rises up and curls around her and makes space for grief, for anxiety, for anger and loss and a bleak, protracted moment of hopelessness that blots everything out, then dissipates. Mostly. She nods down at the table. She looks up at him and nods again. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was just supposed to be a brief alt for 1 x 09. I rejected it for Dialogic because a rule has emerged in my problematic head that those scenes should fit in canon (my fingers just typed “fit in conan”) for the episode, and this doesn’t. However, my problematic Brain ALSO notes that dialogue-wise, everything about their “about last night, what happened in the kitchen” is entirely compatible with that conversation being not about the gross kiss with SpongeWill SquareJaw, but about Castle going rogue and showing up at her apartment.


End file.
